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(LONDON) — President Donald Trump directed his administration to “pause” all military aid to Ukraine, two White House officials told ABC News on Monday, following last week’s combative Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and with Trump pressuring Kyiv into accepting a peace deal to end Russia’s invasion of the country.

The freeze in American aid poses a severe strategic problem for Ukraine, which has become reliant on military and economic support from its Western partners as it tries to repel Russia’s three-year-old invasion and stave off President Vladimir Putin’s push for a peace deal beneficial to Moscow. Experts say that Ukraine and its European partners now produce most of the weaponry destined for the battlefield. But there are crucial American systems that Kyiv will struggle to replace.

“It’s shocking,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News. “Until the last moment I hoped that Trump wouldn’t do it because he wants to be popular and such a move would definitely cause a backlash.”

“Trump is helping Putin to kill Ukrainians,” he added.

A White House official told ABC News that Trump has been clear that he is focused on peace. “We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well,” they said. “We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution.”

“It looks like Trump is trying to make a deal with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and Europe at the cost of Ukraine,” Merezhko said. “He doesn’t apply leverage over the aggressor but is trying to force the victim, the weaker party, to accept demands of the aggressor.”

“If Trump has a different plan in mind he should have at least talked to Zelenskyy about it behind closed doors, which never happened,” the lawmaker said.

Fellow member of parliament Oleksiy Goncharenko told Sky News that “thousands of people will die” due to the “catastrophic” decision.

Allied leaders and officials — already mobilizing to provide more aid and political backing for Ukraine in response to the Trump administration’s skepticism — also expressed concern over the White House decision.

“We need the Americans militarily,” Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said during a Chatham House think tank event in London on Tuesday when asked about the aid pause. “On the battlefield, Russia has not really been advancing in recent months,” she added. “This definitely shouldn’t be a moment where we give in.”

Benjamin Haddad, The French minister delegate for Europe, said the pause to U.S. aid “means moving peace further away.” He added, “To end the war, pressure must be put on the aggressor, Russia,” suggesting European nations must now mobilize to fill the gap left by the U.S.

In Russia, meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists, “It is obvious that the U.S. has been the main supplier of this war so far,” as quoted by the state-run Tass news agency. “If the U.S. stops being one or suspends supplies, this will probably be the best contribution to the cause of peace,” Peskov said.

Two officials familiar with the matter told ABC News that around 90% of the military equipment committed to Ukraine by past Presidential Drawdown Authority packages have already been delivered to the country.

That includes the vast majority of critical munitions and anti-armor systems — such as Javelin anti-tank weapons — they said, adding that most of what is still in the pipeline are armored vehicles that take longer to refurbish. Those were expected to be ready for delivery in the coming months, with all PDA equipment previously on track for delivery by August 2025.

A steady flow of arms is still set to move from the U.S. to Ukraine for at least the next several years thanks to contracts Kyiv signed with private American companies for newly produced weapons.

Many — if not most — of those contracts have been paid. The Trump administration could still attempt to disrupt those shipments through the use of emergency authorities, but there is currently no indication it is trying to do so.

Exactly what equipment earmarked for Ukraine will now be frozen in place is not clear.

Among former President Joe Biden’s final four PDA packages announced in December and January — collectively worth some $3 billion — were missiles and support equipment for Ukraine’s U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, rockets for use by American-made HIMARS systems, artillery munitions and surface-to-air missiles for Ukrainian air defense batteries.

Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K., told ABC News that recent estimates indicate the U.S. share of all military hardware sent to the front has fallen to around 20%, with 25% coming from Europe and 55% domestically produced in Ukraine.

But the 20% accounted for by the U.S. “is the most lethal and important,” Chalmers said. “Ukraine will not collapse — they already experienced an aid cutoff last year. But the effect will be cumulative.”

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War suggested that the suspension of U.S. aid will encourage Putin “to continue to increase his demands and fuel his conviction that he can achieve total victory through war.”

Mykola Bieleskov, an analyst at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, told ABC News that Ukraine can keep fighting at the current tempo for six months to a year while Europe and Kyiv try to ramp up production to fill the gap.

A member of Ukraine’s parliamentary defense committee, Fedir Venislavskyi, told Ukrainian media that Kyiv has a resilience reserve of about six months — even without systematic support from the U.S.

Still, Venislavskyi said the situation will be complicated by any freeze in U.S. aid, adding that work is currently underway to find alternative sources of supply for critically important weaponry.

ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Michelle Stoddart, Shannon Kingston and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(MEXICO CITY) — There is only one gun store in the entire country of Mexico, yet America’s southern neighbor is awash in violent crimes perpetrated with millions of firearms made in the United States.

In a historic case on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether American gun manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta and Colt, can be held liable for allegedly “aiding and abetting” the illicit flow of weapons across the border.

The high court has never before taken up the issue of the sweeping gunmaker immunity found in a 2005 federal law aimed at protecting the industry. Its decision could have a significant impact on firearm companies and the victims of gun violence pursuing accountability.

The government of Mexico is seeking $10 billion in damages and court-mandated safety mechanisms and sales restrictions for U.S.-made guns. The justices will decide whether the case can move forward under an exception in the law.

“Between 70-90% of the crime guns in Mexico are illegally trafficked from the U.S.,” said Jonathan Lowy, an attorney representing the Mexican government. “Essentially, Mexico’s gun problem and the problem of armed cartel violence is almost entirely a result of this crime — a gun pipeline from the U.S. gun manufacturers ultimately to the cartels.”

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 broadly bars lawsuits against any gun manufacturer over the illegal acts of a person using one of a manufacturer’s guns. But it does create an exception for claims involving a gun company’s alleged violation of rules governing the sale and marketing of firearms.

Mexico alleges the manufacturers have for years knowingly marketed and distributed their weapons to border community dealers who participate in illegal gun trafficking into Mexico.

“The law is clear that any person or company can be responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions and, in this case, of their deliberate actions,” Lowy said.

The gun companies, which declined ABC News’ request for an interview, said in court documents that the exception does not apply and the case should be dismissed, in part, because the alleged link to crimes in Mexico is too diffuse and far removed.

“Mexico’s alleged injuries all stem from the unlawful acts of foreign criminals,” the gun companies argued in their Supreme Court brief.

The court has “repeatedly held that it requires a direct connection between a defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury,” the companies claimed. “Thus, the general rule is that a company that makes or sells a lawful product is not a proximate cause of harms resulting from the independent criminal misuse of that product.”

More than 160,000 people in Mexico were killed by guns between 2015 and 2022, according to an analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety.

A large majority of guns involved in the shootings came from U.S. border states. More than 40% of illegal guns seized in Mexico over a five-year period came from Texas, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

In 2023 alone, more than 2,600 firearms were seized going south into Mexico, up 65% from the year before, according to the Department of Homeland Security, and 115,000 rounds of ammunition were captured headed the same direction, up 19% from 2022.

“In its zeal to attack the firearms industry, Mexico seeks to raze bedrock principles of American law that safeguard the whole economy,” the companies wrote in their brief. “It is the criminal who is responsible for his actions, not the company that made or sold the product.”

A federal district court dismissed Mexico’s case in 2022 citing the PLCAA protections. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in early 2024, saying Mexico had made a plausible case for liability under the law’s exception.

The Supreme Court will decide whether to affirm that judgment and allow the case to continue toward what would be a first-of-its-kind trial.

Mexico, in the meantime, announced it will expand its lawsuit after the Trump administration designated six Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

“You will also see an expansion of this lawsuit for the complicity of those who sell weapons, which are [then] introduced into our country,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters last month.

In essence, Mexico will argue that American gun manufacturers aren’t just enabling ordinary gun crime but terrorism, by the U.S. government’s own characterization.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver an opinion in the case, Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, by the end of June.

ABC News’ Matt Rivers and Patty See contributed to this report.

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